Archive for the ‘When Harry Met Sally’ Tag

The new message given to gays these days by evangelical churches is one of acceptance– with a catch. Several mainstream evangelical churches have begun preaching that, as long as gays stay celibate, they can be fully accepted by the church. Unfortunately, this message has convinced straight Christians, and some gay Christians, that gay sex is the problem.

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The history of the church’s reaction to gays

Clearly, churches have been much worse to the GLBTQ community. They used to burn us. Certainly early Church fathers condemned us, saying that we were aberrations (at best) or the devil (at worst)–with a midscale reaction that lasted through my lifetime, that gays were normally heterosexual people who got seduced by the devil to turn to homosexuality which was unnatural. (As if no normal person could ever BE gay…this fooled me for a long time.)

In my lifetime I have seen that stance change. It went from condemnation, saying that God never created gay folks, to an acceptance of the fact that gay people might be innately attracted to the same-sex–or born that way. Created gay–but abnormal, in the sense that some children are born with defects, and that gay is just another defect. Right now, pastors are calling it “not God’s best”–and they are willing to embrace gays if they remain celibate. Well, it just so happens that Evangelicals have stumbled on an accidental “agreement” with a smaller percentage of gays, called Side B Christians, who believe the Bible has “no room for gay sexuality.”